Thursday, May 10, 2007

TERRENGANU

Hi all, well from Penang we flew to Kuala Terrenganu, a city on the Eastern coast of Malaysia's mainland (it's the capital of the state of Terrenganu).

AIR SEKAYU

Once we got to the airport we headed straight for Air Sekayu which is a beautiful waterfall that we really wanted to see, ('air' is the Malay word for waterfall). We got there to find the area PACKED full of Malaysian people as is was a public holiday weekend for them! The area was amazing, a gorgeous river with lots of little waterfalls and pools to swim in underneath them - gorgeous! So before setting out to find the main waterfall in all the brochures we had seen we wanted to find a place to stay. A man called Ma said he ran the place and that all the chalets were full :-( He then said he felt sorry for us and that we could sleep in his office or at his home! He also offered to take us on a tour to show us the waterfall after he had done his prayers. We were a bit unsure but really wanted to see the waterfall esp having come all this way, so figured if worst came to worst we could always get a taxi back to the town we had come through on the way and stay there. While Ma did his prayers we went for a swim in one of the pools in the river under an amazing waterfall, it was so nice! And there were monkeys in the trees by the river, it was incredible! It was quite busy though and since most of the people are Muslim I had to swim in all my clothes as that is what all the women were doing there and I didn't want to offend/be stared at!

At about 4pm Ma got back and we set off on our tour to see the main waterfall. At this time it decided to start POURING with rain, it was a major storm with thunder, lightening etc. Oh well we were wet anyway. Ma said he was taking us on a shortcut to the waterfall which we soon discovered was not on any kind of path, we were trekking through thick jungle, litterally climbing over fallen trees and walking though rivers, we were also heading up a steep hill. This was fine and quite exciting at first but then things started scaring me. I got a leach on my stomach (offically now the thing that grosses me out the most) and Ma pulled it off then we had some steep up and downhill bits where Ma held my hand to support me but was stroking my hand with his thumb while doing so. He them asked me to carry his bag in my pack which I did. At this stage it is starting to get a little dark under the trees, we have been walking for about 45mins or so. I was probably just being paranoid but I started worrying that we were in a bad situation, we were following a strange man though jungle unfamiliar to us on an unofficial 'tour', I was carrying his bag, it was stormy/VERY slippery and starting to get dark (there would have been NO WAY we could find our way back through the jungle if it had got dark). I was thinking the worst like he could be taking us anywhere and maybe there are drugs or a weapon or something in his bag. I wouldn't have worried had he not been making me feel uncomfortable with his weird touches etc. But anyway I stared worrying. Just as I did so he said we had arrived at the destination, we looked around to see that the waterfall was most certainly NOT the waterfall in the pitures but rather a very unimpressive one. He then told us we must take all our clothes off to check for leaches. He said 'I not be shy with you, you not be shy with me' he takes ALL his clothes off and has about 6-8 HORRIBLE leaches on him. We are so scared of the bloody things that we take our clothes off too, he doesn't turn around but rather stares at me the whole time. We have heaps of them on us and they are soooooo gross, I HATE them! He then says we must wash and keeps trying to touch me. He also says I can't put my underwear back on for the walk back. It's totally dodgy but at the same time, we did want to get them off us. He certainly knew how to get a Western women to take her clothes off, said lots of westerners had been up there with him. I wouldn't have felt so violated had we been taken to the actual waterfall we thought we were going to but because it was just a secluded pool with nothing to see it was obvious he had planned it for other reasons. Anyway we made it safely down only just before dark and a chalet had become available (thank goddness for that!) so Tama and I were able to get the next lot of leaches off us (eww ewww ewww!) and have a shower, the bites bleed soooo much. He stood at the door wanting to help get them off but Tama told him no thank you. He also wanted to have dinner with us but we decided to go without dinner and lock ourselves in our chalet and play cards and games instead! It was nice. The next morning we woke up (our chalet was right on the rivers edge an absolutely gorgeous view) and went for a walk up the river only to find that THE waterfall was a 5 min walk from our chalet (and from where we had swam while waiting for Ma to take us to it). So mad but also excited to see it, it was stunning! Had some more swims including going down a smaller waterfall! So fun.



Lake Tasik Kenyir
From there we went to Lake Tasik Kenyer. It was beautiful man-made lake and it's massive. We stayed a a really flash place (for our budget anyway) and we were the only ones there!
There was a pool on the lake and a restaurant all to ourselves. Our chalet had a deck with an amazing view of the lake too. We basically just swam in the pool and relaxed and enjoyed the scenery for the night. It was great. Had a nice dinner too and some drinks of our duty free vodka which we have taken 3weeks to drink!

Hope all is well in NZ. Much love Livi and Tama xx

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